The final release from Microsoft of WINDOWS 8 is around the corner; for some is a giant leap, and for some is a crude reminder of what happened with Vista, the fiasco.

Well, it is a good idea [I suppose] to click on the refresh area in our memory and remember the Windows [pronounced “Win-Bugs”] edition that we are or were using, and planning to leave behind.

The Way We Were: XP and Vista

Product Editions

Back in 2001, life was easy: Microsoft released Windows XP in just two product editions, Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional Edition. The difference between the products was fairly obvious, and with its enhanced feature set, XP Pro was the more expensive and desirable version, as one might expect.

Over time, however, Microsoft muddied the waters with a wealth of new XP product editions.

Three major product editions were added: Windows XP Media Center Edition (which received three major releases and one minor update between 2002 and 2005), Windows XP Tablet PC Edition (which received two major releases between 2002 and 2005), and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, which took most of XP Pro’s feature set and brought it to the x64 hardware platform. Other XP versions, such as XP Embedded and XP Starter Edition, can’t really be considered mainstream products, because they targeted specific usage scenarios and were never made broadly available to consumers.

Following is a list of the major Windows XP versions that Microsoft shipped between 2001 and 2006.

Windows XP Graphical User Interface [GUI]

Windows XP Starter Edition (underdeveloped countries only)

Windows XP Embedded (sold in embedded devices only)

Windows XP Home Edition

Windows XP Home Edition N (European Union only)

Windows XP Media Center Edition

Windows XP Tablet Edition

Windows XP Professional Edition

Windows XP Professional Edition N (European Union only)

Windows XP Professional Edition K (South Korea only)

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

Windows XP for Itanium-based systems

[In a moment, we’ll compare these products with their corresponding Vista versions.]

All Windows XP product versions, except Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and Windows XP for Itanium-based systems, were available only in 32-bit versions.

For Windows Vista, Microsoft surveyed the market and came away with two observations.